I have a 402CD ready to go once I get another tower up. We'll see how
that works :-)
73, Mike W4EF.
On 4/4/2024 10:57 AM, jim.thom jim.t...@telus.net wrote:
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2024 22:07:33 -0700
From: Michael Tope
To:topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: B7P
That sure seems to be the case, Bob. Heck even on 40 meters I have found
myself calling loud Chinese stations in vein. My dipole at 45ft just
doesn't cut it. It must be that there aren't very many BY hams that live
in rural areas with low noise floors. Hopefully portable operations with
In the case of that 160 meter dipole it was almost always better as a
receive antenna for 80 meters. It was better at rejecting ferocious
local QRN than the 80 meter inverted-V. Absolute signal level always
dropped owing to the mismatch, but the noise level dropped even more
improving SNR
inverted-vee :-)
73, Mike W4EF..
On 4/2/2024 6:03 PM, Michael Tope wrote:
When we tried operating in 160 meter contests from W6UE in Pasadena,
it was amusing to see the packet spots complaining about how deaf we
were. We were running a full size flat-top dipole at 90 feet. It
apparently
When we tried operating in 160 meter contests from W6UE in Pasadena, it
was amusing to see the packet spots complaining about how deaf we were.
We were running a full size flat-top dipole at 90 feet. It apparently
worked pretty well as a transmit antenna. Using the 80 meter
inverted-vee for
Yeah, I suppose you could do that for "N-band DXCC" as well. It already
exists for DXCC Honor Roll tallies.
73, Mike W4EF.
On 2/19/2024 3:32 PM, Steve Harrison wrote:
On 2/19/2024 3:25 PM, Michael Tope wrote:
Since reclassifying 160 DXCC totals to exclude
Since reclassifying 160 DXCC totals to exclude FT8 would be terribly
unfair to those who submitted FT8 confirmations toward DXCC in good
faith, it seems like a possible solution would be to add provisions for
a CW endorsement to the 160 meter DXCC award. If it were workable
administratively,
, there is no need to summarize the results of the
contests...
I wonder, is it also possible to compete with yourself in boxing? :-(
---
Nick, UY0ZG
http://www.topband.in.ua
Michael Tope писал(а) 2024-02-06 16:42:
People are driven by different things. For instance, I would be lying
if I
People are driven by different things. For instance, I would be lying if
I claimed I wasn't competitively driven. And I can tell you that at
points in my life it has caused me to "lose perspective". Have I been
overly enthusiastic with the drive to my Alpha 91 amplifier on occasion?
Yes. Have
ZL3IO spotted me Saturday night (Sunday UTC) at 0728 UTC, but I never
heard him call me. If he did call me, it could be that I had my SAL-30
pointed NE at the time. It doesn't have the greatest RDF, but it does
have a really high F/B. After I saw the spot, I listened to the SW, but
I didn't
There was an insanely good opening from here in Southern California to
Europe this evening (Sunday UTC) starting around 0600 UTC. It lasted a
little over 15 minutes. Signals were Q5 and stations came back to me on
the first or second call. It was surreal. I worked 8 European stations,
all new
Remember, Steve, for a given frequency more capacitance equals less
capacitive reactance [Xc = 1/(2*pi*f*c)]. At 1825 KHz, 5300 pf is only
16.5 ohms reactance. That means you are only offsetting a small amount
of inductive reactance. Where you should be more concerned is when the
series
Interestingly, conditions on the west coast seemed pretty good this
morning around our sunrise. I was able to decode HS5NMF between -8 and
-5 and 9M6NA got as high as +1. I suspect both could have been heard
reasonably well on CW. OTOH, the QRN level on their end might have
precluded 2-way
There was a decent opening from here in Southern California to Europe on
Saturday night around 0500 UTC that lasted approximately two and a half
hours. Over the course of the opening, I heard stations from 9A, OM, YU,
S5, DL, PA, G, GW, E7, and GJ. I was able make QSOs with DL and GJ (and
I
I had an interesting experience along these lines back in 2006 for the
CQ WW 160 CW contest. Following the lead of K6SE and others, I got
permission from the Bureau of Land Management to operate from the salt
evaporation ponds on Koehn dry-lake near Mojave, California. I spent all
day Thursday
I spent all morning calling T88WA on 160CW FT8. They responded to my
call twice in a row in the wee hours of the morning when their signal
strength was modest (~R -15), but I never saw the "RR73", message so I
kept trying to work them for hours until the sun came up. In the lead up
to sunrise
has created a personal dilemma, because my DXCC number 339 is Mt
Athos on FT8. I haven't claimed it and probably won't unless I work
#340, Glorioso, which will probably never happen in this lifetime.
Wes N7WS
On 11/5/2022 2:50 PM, Michael Tope wrote:
I am glad to hear T88WA is not at th
I am glad to hear T88WA is not at the hotel club station. The club
station has a low dipole on 160 which in the past has made a poor showing.
I managed to get a response from P29RO on 160 meter FT8 on Friday
morning, but didn't think it was a complete QSO. I am new to "hound"
mode and WSJT-X
Steve,
Does the switch produce an S9 spike on any transition of the switch
(i.e. from position N to position N+/-1) or only on a certain subset of
switch transitions? That might provide a clue as to whether there is a
problem with one of the relays or the power supply that energizes them.
I
Hi Jim,
When I lived in Melbourne Florida, I had an 920 KHz AM station with a
four tower array a short distance from my house (I forget the exact
distance, it was probably on order of 1/2 mile). The daytime pattern
beamed toward my house with a TPO of 5KW. At the time I was using a
Ten-Tec
Hi Jim,
From the P3 manual:/
/
/"The dsPIC further processes the signal for presentation on the
480x272-pixel color TFT LCD display. The "circuitry" shown inside
the processor box in the block diagram is actually implemented as
software routines. The FFT is the fast Fourier
I tried calling CQ on CW at around midnight local (0800z) this morning
and worked JE1CTM, G3PQA, G3OQT, and G3OLB in succession all with good
signals into Southern California. This came after an absolute bounty of
European QSOs on FT8, including a number of eastern European QSOs.
HB9BIN was
I heard JH4UYB on Sunday morning calling CQ on SSB with a good signal,
but he couldn't copy me. I believe he was operating above the FT8
segment, but I don't recall his exact frequency.
73, Mike W4EF.
On 10/26/2020 6:45 AM, mw_comerc...@wp.pl wrote:
Hi,
did anyone work
Dan,
Reading that QRZ.com thread you linked to and reflecting on K4SAV's
measurements and how much they appeared to vary over a fairly short
period of time, got me wondering about what could be responsible. I am
fairly certain that at least part of the radial system for my 160 meter
vertical
Roger,
When you checked for increased noise on 10 and 15 meters, did you have
your radio set for maximum sensitivity and were the main and AUX input
ports of the MFJ-1025 terminated with 50 ohms (or at least not connected
to any outside antenna)?
73, Mike W4EF.
On 3/17/2020 11:18
f 1.8 to 30 MHz". Does the MFJ-1025 only go to
20MHz?
73, Mike W4EF
On 3/17/2020 10:31 AM, Mike Waters wrote:
Mike, is there any reason why you tested it above 20 MHz? That's outside
the 1026's specified frequency range.
73, Mike
W0BTU
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 9:07 AM Michael Tope
edSherwoodTableofReceiverPerformance-RevF.pdf
Dave KH6AQ
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 4:07 AM Michael Tope <mailto:w...@dellroy.com>> wrote:
I just happen to have a spare MFJ-1026 at home. I did a real quick
test
using my FT1000MP MK-V while powering the MFJ-1026 from an
I just happen to have a spare MFJ-1026 at home. I did a real quick test
using my FT1000MP MK-V while powering the MFJ-1026 from an Astron
supply. Similar to your results, Steve, I got about a 12 to 14 dB
increase in the noise floor on 10 meters when the MFJ unit was turned on
and connected to
Dave is that -112 dBm you calculated the output referred noise? If so,
what is the gain behind it?
Thanks,
73, Mike W4EF...
On 3/14/2020 2:13 PM, Dave Cuthbert wrote:
Steve, I ran a SPICE model of the MFJ-1095 front end. What gain there is
resides there. The next three stages have unity
for someone else
might not work for you.
73, Mike
W0BTU
On Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 12:46 PM Michael Tope wrote:
2) Is your sense antenna intrinsically inefficient like a beverage or
K9AY loop or is it something efficient like a tribander up reasonably high?
3) Is your sense antenna intrinsically efficient
, and in the latter case the
attenuation added in front of the J310 in the main channel will degrade
its effective noise figure.
73, Mike W4EF.
On 3/14/2020 10:46 AM, Michael Tope wrote:
Steve,
Couple of questions to rule out gain distribution issues:
1) On the sense antenna input do you
Steve,
Couple of questions to rule out gain distribution issues:
1) On the sense antenna input do you have the pre-amp turned on or off?
2) Is your sense antenna intrinsically inefficient like a beverage or
K9AY loop or is it something efficient like a tribander up reasonably high?
3) Is your
s why having more amplified elements makes it more important to design
the antenna amplifiers for low circuit noise.
73, John W1FV
-Original Message-
From: Topband
[mailto:topband-bounces+john.kaufmann=verizon@contesting.com] On Behalf
Of Michael Tope
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2020 4:
There are a lot of SMT to DIP adapter boards out there which would allow
newer SMD op-amps to be used in older through-hole PWB layouts.
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/aries-electronics/LCQT-SOIC8-8/A880AR-ND/4754588
73, Mike W4EF.
On 3/12/2020 1:15 PM, Lee STRAHAN
Hi Lee,
Yes, if you are combining coherent signals that are not in phase, then
the each of the voltage vectors is weighted by cos(phi-i) where phi-i is
the angle between the i-th voltage vector and the 1st vector. If phi=0,
then you have the case I described previously. I can see how this can
What matters is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Take the canonical
example of an ideal 2-port Wilkinson power combiner with in-phase
coherent signals of 10 Vrms applied to each input along with 1 Vrms
random thermal noise from the respective element amplifiers applied to
each input (i.e. each
I was hearing them 339 to 559 this evening around 0730 UTC. I may have
actually worked them. I could tell they came back right away when I
called them, but the QSB buried their reply. After a couple of tries, I
heard their reply at ESP level. Then immediately after I stopped
transmitting my
On 12/18/2019 3:46 PM, Chuck Hutton wrote:
In the past, I have simply used my N2PK VNA to measure impedance of the choke
by connecting the shield of the coax to the VNA ports.
Recently I've been discussing common mode chokes with others who have a
different methodology.
They prefer to do a
Thanks for coming back to me, Tom. The only reason I knew the band was
open is that I was sitting on 1821.0 listening for S01WS who had been
spotted there. Apparently he was gone because, Eric NO3M, asked if the
frequency was in use and then started calling CQ. I was surprised to
hear HB9CAT
During the last minimum, there were times when high northern latitude
stations in zone 17 and 18 would be very strong for long periods of time
here in southern California. Last Sunday morning during the ARRL 160
contest there was an opening that had that very low absorption
characteristic
On 9/13/2019 6:31 AM, N4ZR wrote:
I don't think I've ever read anything on this topic. Basically, what
I'm asking is, could ground wave to a fairly nearby Skimmer be used as
an analogue to low-angle radiation to assess the effectiveness of
radial systems on an inverted L? W3LPL is about 30
Rune
I made a recording of what you sounded like on the night of March 15
(UTC) in California. My receive antenna was nothing special - just some
unknown combination of my transmit antenna (55 ft top-loaded vertical)
and a 20ft top loaded vertical (one element of a W8JI Rx four square)
mixed
Hi Ray,
I have a 55ft tall aluminum tubing vertical for 160 meters which is
center loaded with an inductor and top loaded with 4 sloping wires. At
the top of the tubing vertical I have a yard arm made of a piece of
aluminum angle stock that holds up a pulley which is offset ~18" from
the
Thanks to all who replied with generous offers to help with the
translation to Russian. I have received the assistance I needed.
Happy New Year to All !
73, Mike W4EF
On 12/25/2017 9:31 PM, Michael Tope wrote:
I am trying to compose an email to a Russian speaking ham in Eastern
I am trying to compose an email to a Russian speaking ham in Eastern
Europe (Kaliningrad) about a Topband QSO from several years ago. I
composed the letter with Google Translate and was wondering if there was
a ham fluent in English and Russian who could check the translation for
me? Let me
Another good example was D4B's 160 meter inverted-V Yagi that was setup
near the edge of the bluff at the Monteverde contest site (now D4C).
Al put in an incredible topband signal into the west coast of the USA.
Once when I sent him an email complimenting him on his big signal, he
wrote back
Doug,
I don't think using remotes in different countries would be permitted
even under the most liberal interpretation of the new ARRL DXCC rules.
As far as I know, for example, using the RHR site in Sicily would
require me to sign IT9/W4EF. If I were to simply sign W4EF, I would
likely not
Larry, you hit upon a very important point regarding ethical lapses not
being entirely victimless. Personally, I feel very strongly that when I
send a QSL to someone it should indicate the state, county, and grid
square where my station was located at the time of the contact. If my
QSL or LOTW
On 8/15/2014 6:51 AM, Tom W8JI wrote:
For receiving, an absence of noise sources in the path is all the
difference in the world. As an example of this look at what N7JW and
K7CA did from the Utah desert area. Utah desert is like the
anti-saltwater, and they are located much further from
On 8/13/2014 6:28 PM, Tom W8JI wrote:
But skimmer, which displays a relative level, does not show the level
difference.
Skimmer shows about the same peak levels, but the stations closer or
over salt water paths (not localized salt water) have longer openings
but no more level for peak
I am very sad to hear this news. There are some things you count on in
life. The sun rises every morning and then sets in the evening; and back
when I was really active on topband and up every morning at some
insanely early hour, it was just a given that Bobby was lurking there
somewhere in
Timo,
According to ARRL's TLW program, your RF insertion loss for 1500ft of
RG-6 cable should be around 7dB. This is based on Belden 8215 which uses
a solid dielectric which makes it more lossy than your 1189A which is a
foamed dielectric, but less lossy than 1189A because it uses a copper
On 1/6/2014 7:18 PM, Bob K6ZZ wrote:
Folks,
I have a 60' tall top loaded vertical for 160M and would like to know how
best to feed it to use it on 80M as well. On 80M there will be some pretty
high voltages at the feedpoint.
Other than dealing with high voltages, is doing this a bad idea (or
On 12/16/2013 5:52 PM, GeorgeWallner wrote:
On Mon, 16 Dec 2013 14:32:41 -0500
Charlie Cunningham charlie-cunning...@nc.rr.com wrote:
Many black plastics are blackened by the addition of carbon black
that
can make them rather lossy at RF! Been there, done that in my work
- at
900 MHz.
I
On 9/24/2013 6:05 PM, Tom W8JI wrote:
They were supposed to be non-inductive carbon, but need to find
something better like carbon film.
Any resistor except a big wire wound is non-inductive on a low
frequency like 160.
What you want is a composition type resistor, either metal or
On 7/27/2013 3:23 AM, Bill Tippett wrote:
W0BTU:
For whatever reason, there's what seems to be a lot of hype about
W6AM's
rhombics. Such as:
The W6AM station was legendary around the world. Don could beat you in a
pileup for some obscure African station no matter what band, and even if
you
On 5/7/2013 7:33 AM, Paul Christensen wrote:
The standard drop cable is a bonded foil with single braid, it has
been that way since the late 1970's. The current best grade is
Brightwire by CommScope. Any good cable will far exceed FCC specs
without a quad shield.
It remained that way with
On 5/7/2013 7:55 PM, Tom W8JI wrote:
LMR400 or any cable, in sensitive applications, requires a solid bond
to the shield that carries the vast majority of return current. In the
case of almost all cables on HF and higher, that is the innermost
foil. Of course it is different at audio or
He claims he is using a 4 element vertical beam to Europe. An
optimized 4 EL array combined with proximity to saltwater might explain
it, but that still seems like a big stretch. I remember sending an email
to Ed @ D4B remarking on how loud he was here in W6 during one contest
where he was
Glenn,
The impedance of the very short element at the point where it attaches
to the 4x4 is very high (i.e. very high capacitive reactance). When you
stick your hand on the 4x4 you are adding the impedance of your
hand/body in parallel with a very high capacitive reactance (i.e. the
On 12/15/2012 7:59 AM, DAVID CUTHBERT wrote:
Mike that QTH looks alot like the Great Salt Lake of Utah where I have
operated a few 160 meter 'tests running a balloon vertical.
Dave WX7G
I learned about this QTH from Earl K6SE (SK). The terrain to the north
isn't so great (high
On 12/13/2012 3:14 PM, Tom W8JI wrote:
Somehow they thought moving the feedpoint eliminated the need for
radials with an electrically short antenna, when the real mechanism
was a 1/2 wave vertical was converted to a 1/4 wave groundplane 1/4
wave above ground and it only got a tiny bit
Here is what I found, Steve:
http://k3el.wordpress.com/dx/zl9hr/propagation/
2. Operating times -- It is a condition of our operating permit that we
leave the island during the hours of darkness. This is a general
limitation for visitors to Campbell Island, and similar conditions
applied
minutes :-( ).
73, Mike W4EF..
On 11/25/2012 5:16 PM, wb6r...@mac.com wrote:
On Nov 25, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Michael Tope wrote:
http://k3el.wordpress.com/dx/zl9hr/propagation/
2. Operating times -- It is a condition of our operating permit that we leave
the island during
I'll name names. Last night on 80 meters, K0MN kept calling over and
over through the entire period (~15 minutes) when PT0S was listening for
JAs at his sunrise. To make matters worse, somebody decided it would be
helpful to read him the riot act on PT0S's frequency as in K0MN idiot
over and
of, the culprit was jamming the DX qrg, not calling repeatedly out of
turn (the latter being a more subtle way for a bootlegger to tarnish
someone's reputation).
73, Mike W4EF...
On 11/12/2012 8:13 AM, Michael Tope wrote:
I'll name names. Last night on 80 meters, K0MN kept calling
For illegal power, there is not much you can do unless, as you say, you
are in the shack watching it. For bad operating you can diplomatically
mention to the offender that your heard someone using their call and
using very poor operating techniques (specifics supplied) and that you
figured
observations. Mea culpa.
73, Mike W4EF...
On 11/12/2012 9:36 AM, mstang...@comcast.net wrote:
Michael,
Good advice. Remember to contact the potential offender off-list.
Mike N2MS
- Original Message -
From: Michael Tope w...@dellroy.com
To: topband@contesting.com
Sent
I understand what you are saying, Bruce, but we should remember that
other DXers may not be the only ones listening:
http://pt0s.com/about.html
If you read this you will see that the folks who put this expedition
went to a lot of trouble to get permission to operate on this entity.
Part of
If you look at Ken Norton's paper from the December 1941 Proceedings of
the IRE The Calculation of Ground-Wave Field Intensity Over a Finitely
Conducting Spherical Earth, he lays out the equations for the E field
from a vertical radiator for short distances (short enough to neglect
earth
On 10/9/2012 7:31 AM, Tom W8JI wrote:
So again my question - if this low-angle ground-wave (aka
surface-wave) energy dies off so quickly (e.g. down 20dB at just 20
miles), how does any of it get to the ionosphere where it can be
useful for topband DX?
Is the disagreement about how useful the
On 10/7/2012 3:42 AM, Richard Fry wrote:
It will be seen from the data that no notch exists in the fields
radiated by the monopole at elevation angles of 3 degrees and less, as
expected by some when considering only the far-field patterns shown by
MoM (NEC) software, and in antenna
I have long had a suspicion that some fraction of the power in surface
wave must be converted to skywave as the surface wave encounters
discontinuities in the ground medium (both physical geometry and
dielectric parameters). Some folks I know from work were doing research
on low-loss
On 2/9/2012 6:48 AM, Roger D Johnson wrote:
The Gentleman's Band has been dead a long time, Eddy. It's now inhabited by
the same
type of operators that infest all the other bands.
As for QRL? It's often used by lids on the DX's frequency to cause QRM and
provoke a
response. A version of
On 4/26/2011 1:49 AM, Tom Boucher wrote:
I take your point Yuri, but my simplistic way of looking at the current
decreasing along a straight quarter wave of wire is due to the current flow
through it's distributed capacitance to ground. Maybe that is wrong and I
should go back and look at
On 4/23/2011 5:30 PM, ZR wrote:
On 4/23/2011 7:04 AM, ZR wrote:
The linear loaded KLM 40 and 80M yagis never lived up to their hype. OTOH
the little Cushcraft 2el 40 with loading coils plus a capacity hat way
out
on the elements is a proven winner.
Ive sold one of my 40M 4el KLM's and made
76 matches
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